4

The Electron and the Holy Ghost

Around the beginning of the twentieth century, a new era of scientific enquiry began, and with it came some startling discoveries concerning the nature of matter. Previously, classical physicists had thought of the material universe as “deterministic,” that it obeyed the established Newtonian/Einsteinian laws of motion and gravity, and that all material processes could in general be predicted with experimentally verifiable accuracy. But when physicists started probing atomic structures and their components, they discovered that they behaved in random, uncontrollable ways. In order to account for the peculiar dynamics of this strange underworld, scientists developed a new kind of physics, known today as quantum mechanics.

This new science is remarkable, because its practitioners not only believe in the paranormal, but can prove experimentally that it is a reality.

It all started with the investigation of subatomic particles, the smallest entities yet detected in the universe, the components of atoms, of light and of just about everything else. Originally it was thought that they were simply particle-like points in space, but recent discoveries have shown that the “particle” observed is only the detectable trace of a much more complex entity, whose overall presence reaches far and wide.

The first hint that this was so came from investigations into the nature of light itself, which is emitted by light sources in discrete “particle packets,” or quanta, of electromagnetic energy called photons.

It was noted that a thin beam of light shone through a tiny pinhole in a partition with a dark screen or photographic plate behind it creates a small circle of light on the plate. If there are two holes in the partition close together, the image on the back-plate forms two circles of light over-lapping. In the area where they do overlap, however, there are intermittent dark bands, where obviously no light is present. This has been attributed to a familiar wave-mechanics phenomenon known as interference, and it shows that the light is emerging from each pinhole as waves, some-times overlapping and reinforcing one another, and sometimes canceling one another out—hence the dark, lightless bands. Actually, the wavelike nature of light was first recognized as long ago as 1803 by the Englishman Thomas Young, using nothing more than a flame, a partition with two narrow slits and the dark backdrop upon which the pattern appeared.

Now, if single photons are fired one after another from a light gun over a given period of time, when the photographic plate is subsequently developed the interference pattern, logically, should not be there, because a single photon, presumably, cannot “interfere” with itself. Curiously, however, the interference pattern invariably does appear. The photon, it seems, can do whatever it chooses in its own surreal world. It can clap with one hand, creating interference patterns out of nothing as if in collaboration with some unseen, ghostly counterpart. Stranger still, when a photon detector is engaged to “see” what is going on when the photons emerge from the holes, the interference pattern disappears. Apparently we only have to “look” at a photon and it changes its nature completely.

Light, then, is a wavelike phenomenon. At least, that is what every-one thought until Einstein came along with a completely different interpretation of it. He formulated some equations to account for a phenomenon known as the “photoelectric effect,” which is the effect of light shining on a metal surface, whereby electrons are emitted by the metal, causing an electric current to flow. His calculations proved, theoretically, that light—the photon—is a particle. This was later experimentally verified, and it was for this discovery, not the famous Theory of Relativity, that Einstein received his Nobel Prize.

Later discoveries made by physicists in the 1920s, notably those of the French aristocrat Louis de Broglie and the Austrian Erwin Schrödinger, showed that the electron, one of the fundamental components of all atoms, also has both particle and wave properties.

So what exactly is light, this ghostlike, photon entity? It is a particle with wavelike properties, a wave with particle-like properties, a mysterious, diminutive something that actually reacts when we “look” at it. If we leave it alone, it behaves like a wave, but as soon as we start to measure its movements, it flips over into particle mode. Classic abracadabra: now you “see” it, and when you do, it responds, “curls up,” and changes its nature completely.

Another breakthrough experiment, again demonstrating that there is a great deal more to these wave/particles than first meets the eye, was the “twin particle” experiment conducted in 1982 by Alain Aspect and his team at the Institute of Optics in Paris.

Originally outlined by the theoretical physicist John Bell in 1964, the experiment was devised to test an apparent absurdity in the rules of quantum mechanics, first pointed out in 1935 by Einstein and two colleagues, Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen. Basically it concerned one of the most controversial rules of quantum theory, which says that subatomic particles are interconnected in a way that classical physicists believed was impossible.

It was discovered that certain subatomic processes result in the creation of pairs of particles with identical properties. For example, when an electron and its antimatter opposite—a positron—come into contact and annihilate one another, they coalesce into two light quanta, two photons, which then zoom off in opposite directions at the maximum speed allowed by nature—the speed of light. Quantum physics states that, irrespective of how far apart these twin quanta travel, when they are measured they will always be seen to have the very same angles of polarization. That is, at the precise moment of measurement of one or another of these particles, its twin somehow “knows” which angle is to be agreed upon. Consequently there must be some sort of instantaneous communication going on between them.

Another curious feature of quantum mechanics arises from what is known as the “uncertainty principle,” which was first expressed in 1927 by the German physicist Werner Heisenberg. According to this principle, wave/particles do not have a definite position in space and time, which means that their locations can only be expressed in terms of variable statistical probabilities collated over the course of many duplicate experiments. The “uncertainty” arises from the fact that it is not possible to measure simultaneously, with a high degree of accuracy, both the position and the momentum of a moving particle. Measuring one aspect, say the position, affects the momentum, and vice versa. In other words, the very act of observation changes the primary state of the wave/ particle. We noted this strange property earlier in the behavior of the photon, which, when targeted by a photon detector, switches over from wave to particle mode. The point is, in their virgin state, wave/particles do not have exact locations. Depending on how they are measured, they can manifest as a specific point, or as a fuzzy cloud of wave-like energy.

The Danish physicist Niels Bohr had a long-standing dispute with Einstein and his colleagues over the true nature of this so-called action at a distance between twin quanta. Einstein rejected the notion because it seemed to imply that there was a “superluminal” (faster than light) transference of information operating between the two coordinates, and the Theory of Special Relativity states absolutely that nothing on a material level of existence can travel faster than light. Bohr’s answer to the problem, which is generally accepted by the majority of today’s physicists, was that there was in fact no superluminal communication taking place, and that Einstein’s error lay in viewing twin particles as being independent, self-contained phenomena. Bohr reasoned that if subatomic quanta do not really exist until a probe of some kind causes them to “curl up” and manifest one of their measurable properties, then it was meaningless to consider them as separate things. Quantum systems in their natural, “unmeasured” state are indivisible from one another, and what we observe as being apparently unrelated subatomic events are in reality in a constant and immutable state of interconnectedness, even if they are on opposite sides of the universe.

When John Bell first thought up an experiment that could verify or disprove this idea, technology hadn’t yet developed to a level at which it could produce instruments with an accuracy and sensitivity sufficient to carry it through. This is why it took until the early 1980s for Alain Aspect and his group finally to take up the challenge.

The experiment involved creating a stream of twin photons by heating calcium atoms with high-energy lasers, and then allowing them to fly off in opposite directions through lengths of pipe. At the end of each pipe were special filters that deflected each twin toward either one of two polarization detectors. The accuracy of the instrumentation ensured that all the crucial stages in the experiment could be performed in so brief an instant that there would be insufficient time for even a beam of light to traverse the space between the two particles. And, sure enough, as quantum theory had predicted mathematically, each photon was always able to manifest simultaneously exactly the same angle of polarization as its twin. Consequently, physicists now believe that the connection between two such related quanta must be “nonlocal,” which means that no matter how far apart they are they always remain composite parts of a single, dynamic, interconnected system.

So we know that twin photons generated from a single impact event travel out from the source of their origin at the speed of light. Now this is significant because, according to the physicist, to an observer moving at such a velocity, time and space as we perceive them would both cease to exist. As speed is increased, they say, time slows down proportionately, eventually reaching a complete standstill at the speed of light. Simultaneously, space gradually contracts, eventually into nothing, no space whatsoever. What scientists are positing here, therefore, is a dimension of existence in which space and time do not exist. This is why the photon, itself perpetually existing in this strange, “spaceless” world in which time stands still, can instantaneously “transmit” information to a twin—because the impulses carrying the data have no “space” to pass through: they are already there, so to speak.

Clearly we are talking now of an alternative reality to the one we are all familiar with, quite literally another dimension, and it is a world as curious as any found in fairy tales. In this alternative, quantum world, all entities, in moving at the speed of light, must effectively occupy, at one and the same instant, all possible locations along the line of passage. No matter how long the line as observed from a stationary frame of reference, the photon simultaneously exists everywhere along it. Like the Holy Ghost or the spirit of Muhammad or the Buddha, it is “omnipresent.”

It is difficult to imagine what it would be like to see the universe through the “eyes” of the photon. There would be no distance between stars and galaxies, continents, you, or me; there would be no space, no ticking of clocks, and no aging. The moment a photon is created, say, inside a distant star, at that very same instant it could be entering the retina of an observer zillions of miles away. Its creation and annihilation is in fact one single-impact event, captured for all eternity in a frozen, timeless instant.

Similarly, if we ourselves could attain the speed of light and cross over into this other reality, theoretically we would be godlike. Just like the photon we could exist everywhere simultaneously, “visiting” remote constellations simply by focusing on them; and our conception and our death would be perceived as one and the same event, a single, permanent feature in the timeless, unfading fabric of creation. Presumably, once created, everything existing in such a dimension must exist literally forever; and what might be observed in the laboratory as, for example, the creation and annihilation of a humble photon is merely a cross-section of a much greater and more complex reality in which the observed event, which might have taken only a microsecond or two to unfold, continues to have a permanent existence independent of time.

According to Einstein, extraordinary changes would occur to a physical body if it could ever reach the light barrier. Its length, together with the length of the trajectory in space along which it were traveling, would become zero, and its mass would become infinite, expanding at right angles to the direction of motion into a vibrant sheet of wavelike energy of immeasurable size.

Now, in crossing the light barrier, any physical entity would, in effect, be transcending the fourth dimension, the line of time, and passing over to a quite different dimension existing beyond time. And if we refer to time as the fourth dimension (after the three dimensions of space: line, plane, solid), then the next in succession—what I called in my last book the plane of light—is the fifth. This is the “nonlocal” world of the photon quantum.

What is emerging here, in fact, is an overall cosmic picture of a succession of dimensions, from zero point to a line, a line to a plane, a plane to a solid, and subsequently the continuous existence of a solid along the line of time. These four different perspectives are easily recognizable, but the fifth in the ascending scale, as physicists have discovered, needs more than a little intuition to identify. In a later chapter we shall discuss in more detail these different dimensions, as they provide a convenient way of fixing our position in the cosmic scheme of things.

The point to note here is that this fantastic fifth dimension is definitely there. We know this because physicists have proven it mathematically. This is highly significant, because it raises a most interesting question: which of the two dimensions is nearer to reality, the time-less, spaceless, nonlocal world of the photon, or the world we perceive, a world of sense objects, ticking clocks, night and day, birth and death? The answer, of course, at least as far as the physicist is concerned, is that the nonlocal world of fundamental quanta is the primary reality, and that the world perceived in time by our ordinary senses is at best incomplete. This is precisely what Einstein was referring to when he wrote in a letter to the relatives of a deceased colleague, “People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”¹

What is particularly interesting about this curious nonlocal dimension of the particle physicist is that it almost perfectly matches the worldview of many so-called primitive peoples, of the aboriginal shamans, of the writers of many of the world’s great scriptures and, perhaps most significantly, of the Egyptian priesthood. Remember the Hopi, whose shamans perceive only an “eternal present” and whose ceremonial dance results in those involved experiencing the collapse of the whole universe into a single event. In a similar vein we have the Egyptians of the Old Kingdom and scriptural writers from every major culture, to whom the concepts of eternity (timelessness) and infinity (spacelessness) were common fare.

As I described earlier, the psychedelic experience can result in the same kind of impression, that is, of a world in which time seems to stand still. Speaking personally, my own “extratemporal” experiences were impressive in the extreme, and it is unlikely that I will ever forget those uplifting feelings that we human beings could live forever.

Possibly such perceptions are the result of what Colin Wilson sees as right-brain, intuitive thought processes—of the kind he believes to have been used by the possessors of ancient “lunar” knowledge, which was unified and enabled people to see things as a whole. The Hopi’s concept of an eternal present seems to express just such a unified world-view, in which everything in the entire universe condenses into a conceptual singularity, multiplicity becomes unity, all becomes one.

Now let’s return to another strange idea that has echoes in the present, one that was first expounded at least as long ago as the time of the Greek philosophers Pythagoras and Thales. This is the notion that matter itself is “psychic,” that it possesses some kind of awareness of its environment. Probably very few scholars have ever given any serious consideration to such a seemingly fanciful claim. It’s a quaint idea, one might think, but we shouldn’t take it to heart. And yet, curiously, some of the latest discoveries of modern science actually lend support to such a view.

We have already mentioned the peculiarly responsive behavior of the photon, which behaves like a wave when left unobserved and as a particle when targeted by a detector, and also the now proven reality of nonlocal (timeless, spaceless) interactivity between twin quanta.

In an attempt to explain the principle of nonlocality and the idea of a vast web of interconnectedness permeating the whole universe, the University of London physicist David Bohm posited the existence of what he called quantum potential. He saw this as a new kind of energy field that, like gravity, pervades the whole universe, but whose influence does not weaken with distance.

Bohm first recognized a possible indication of this quantum potential through his work on plasmas, gases comprising a high density of electrons and positive ions (atoms with a positive charge). He noticed that the electrons, once they were in plasma, began to act in concert, as if they were all part of a greater, interconnected whole. For example, if any impurities were present in the plasma, it would always realign itself and trap all foreign bodies in an exclusion zone—just as a living organism might encase poison in a boil. Bohm observed also a similar, orchestrated mass movement of electrons in metals and superconductors, with each one acting as if it “knew” what countless billions of others were about to do. According to Bohm, particles act in this way through the influence of the quantum potential, a subquantum force matrix that somehow coordinates the movement of the whole.

It appears that when plasmas are rejecting impure substances and regenerating themselves, they look very similar to swirling masses of well-organized protoplasm. This curious “organic” quality led Bohm to comment that he often had the impression that the electron sea was, in a sense, “alive.” He possibly did not intend this to be taken too literally, that the electron mass was living in the same way as an amoeba, but the evident highly coordinated symmetries of the plasma convinced him that the electrons were responding to one of many “intelligent” orders implicit in the fabric of the universe. He believed that order exists in many different degrees, some forms being much more ordered than others, and that as a consequence the things we see as disordered at our ordinary levels of perception may in fact be perfectly ordered when viewed in a more objective way.

To illustrate this point, imagine yourself as a microcosmic visitor in a living cell, observing amid a writhing sea of biomolecules—proteins, enzymes, amino acids, and the like—all busy exchanging energies, whizzing past you in a flurry of hyperactivity. What you would see might appear to be virtual chaos, a seething marketplace full of eager bargain-hunters, pushing, gathering in random groups, shouting, haggling. But, in fact, all this frenzied activity, appearing on the face of it to be an unending display of random physical actions, is totally governed by the hidden DNA of the cell, possibly one of the most organized and beautifully proportioned structures in the entire universe, and producing, as a direct result of the cell’s activity, a greater organism of an infinitely higher order.

So these electron symmetries, which Bohm called plasmons, appear to be following hidden instructions encoded somewhere in the subquantum fabric of the universe. But even where we observe no apparent orchestrated activity, where masses of electrons seem to be acting randomly, we may simply be trying to view them on the wrong scale—rather like our microcosmic onlooker in the biochemical marketplace of the cell.

Bohm was ultimately to conclude that the ordinary world as seen through orthodox scientific experimentation is really an illusion, something like a holographic image, and that somewhere behind this lies a much deeper and more meaningful level of reality—the holographic “film,” as it were, from which the image originates. This metaphor of the universe as a living hologram subsequently became the central theme of Bohm’s investigations, which have been summarized by Michael Talbot in his book The Holographic Universe. We can take another look at the wider implications of this important concept later.

Bohm’s views on consciousness in relation to matter are also interesting. He believed that consciousness itself is actually a subtle, highly rarefied form of matter and that forms of intelligence exist, in correspondingly different degrees, in all kinds of material substances. “The ability of form to be active,” he said, “is the most characteristic feature of mind, and we have something that is mindlike already with the electron.”²

As it happens, Gurdjieff and Ouspensky were saying much the same thing in the early part of the twentieth century, that everything, including all our finer thoughts and aspirations, has a material existence and could, theoretically, be weighed and measured. On the subject of matter as we know it, Gurdjieff had this to say: “In addition to its cosmic properties, every substance also possesses psychic properties, that is, a certain degree of intelligence.”³

Do these observations seem at all familiar? They sound decidedly “Greek” to me. Bohm’s electrons, negatively charged wave/particles that orbit the nuclei of atoms at velocities approaching the speed of light, are what give matter its substance, its apparent solidity. And if electrons exhibit “the most characteristic feature of mind,” then this means that the Greeks were right all along and that all material things are endowed with “psychic” properties.

In fact, Bohm then took this highly mystical worldview a giant leap farther by suggesting that not only are “inanimate” objects like rocks and stones in some way alive and intelligent, but so too is all energy, all time, all space—everything. As we noted earlier, Sri Aurobindo expressed a similar view when he said that if there were a single point in the universe that were not conscious, the whole universe itself would be unconscious.

The principle of nonlocal interconnectedness is hereby taken to the absolute limit, where even so-called empty space is seen to be full of meaning, brimming with an infinite store of primordial intelligence, the underlying formative matrix for everything existing, including ourselves. Thus all the phenomena we observe in the physical universe are simply “ripples” on the surface of an unimaginably vast ocean of deeper meaning. This hidden world Bohm called the implicate or enfolded order, the subsurface dimension that gives rise to the phenomena we observe with our senses, in the explicate, unfolded order. So the manifestations of all forms are the product of endless enfoldings and unfoldings between these two very different but mutually interconnected dimensions.

In this way a wave/particle, like an electron, is described not as one thing, but as a nebulous stream of interchangeable energies enfolded throughout the whole of space. When it is measured by an investigator, what is observed is merely one property of the “greater electron,” which has simply responded to some probe or other by unfolding into the explicate order.

Obviously the ancient Greeks would have known nothing of the strange properties of the subatomic particle. Nevertheless, they still somehow managed to establish a view on the mindlike nature of materiality that accords with the latest discoveries of modern science. How? Was it a lucky guess? Did someone perhaps tell them? Or was it just plain old-fashioned intuition? Of the three possibilities, I suspect that the first is the least likely. For reasons that will become clear a little later, I am inclined to believe that the Greeks received this wisdom from their predecessors, but that intuition played a large part in their understanding of the teachings they inherited.

So what else is “Greek” in this present era of scientific discovery, with its particle consciousness, photon “telepathy,” and so forth? Is there any other knowledge that these ancient peoples possessed that might be relevant to this enquiry? Indeed there is: there is the knowledge that they received directly from the Egyptians in the form of the Hermetic Code, which says that everything in this universe manifests strictly according to musical principles.

Once again we can see how strangely “modern” is this view, because scientists themselves are now speaking more and more in terms of a musical universe that endlessly vibrates, and of physical phenomena all possessing unique resonances of their own.

For example, in his book Other Worlds, Paul Davies describes the way electrons orbit the nuclei of atoms in a regular order, whereby only stationary patterns will occur. He compares the phenomenon to the standing wave-pattern of air in a particular set of organ pipes, where only certain established notes are permitted because the patterns of air-waves must fit into the geometry of the pipes. Similarly, only certain “notes” (frequencies, energies) are accommodated by the atom. When transitions occur between the normal energy levels, electrons emit characteristic colors—streams of photons—and these are the visual evidence of what Davies calls “this subatomic music.” He continues:

We can therefore regard the spectrum of light from an atom as similar to the pattern of sound of a musical instrument. Each instrument produces a characteristic sound, and just as the timbre of a violin differs markedly from that of a drum or a clarinet, so the color mixture of light from a hydrogen atom is characteristically distinct from the spectrum of a carbon or uranium atom. In both cases there is a deep association between the internal vibrations (oscillating membranes, undulating electron waves) and the external waves (sound, light).⁴

There are other musical relationships between atoms and their components. For example, all atoms are members of a whole, integrated family, ranging from the lightest, hydrogen, with one electron tracing a lone orbit around its nucleus, to the densest, heavily radioactive atoms, which have many electrons orbiting the nucleus in seven permitted energy levels. Remember that there are seven successive “energy levels” in the major musical scale. Obviously the eighth, transcendental “note” of this fundamental atomic scale is the whole phenomenon, consisting of all atoms everywhere.

Further, a recently developed classification system known as the theory of quantum chromodynamics suggests that beneath the materiality of the atom there are other essentially musical symphonies being played by nature. Scientists are currently classifying a certain category of subatomic particles according to a system known as the eightfold way. The theory is so called because it puts certain routinely observed “particle molecules” known as baryons, pions, and mesons together in families of eight. The term was originally coined by the American physicist Murray Gell-Mann and was intended as a pun. He was apparently familiar with the “eightfold path to enlightenment” devised by the Buddha, and presumably felt that the name would add a lighter note to his complex mathematical theory. Doubtless the idea that the Buddha’s belief system is in any way scientific would make Gell-Mann’s toes curl. But, being unashamedly what the science writer Richard Morris has referred to as “one of those deluded mystics who manage to see parallels between theories in physics and ideas associated with Eastern mysticism,” I would suggest that this is precisely the case, that it is no mere coincidence that the Buddha’s musical interpretation of reality should so easily and naturally blend in with the foremost ideas of today’s scientists. The “eightfold way” of the Buddha is a variation on the Hermetic Code, and like the “eight steps of learning” of his Chinese counterpart Confucius, it was founded on the idea that the whole universe is an essentially musical structure and that to realize this, to tune in to this fundamental reality, one had to conform to the laws and forces controlling it.

Thus, if we look closer at this chromodynamic system of classification, we shall see a quite familiar pattern emerge.

There are supposedly eight low-mass baryon wave/particles making one octet, eight pions forming a second octet and eight vector-mesons making a third—twenty-four in all. Now, this same family of particles also comprises, in addition to the octets, a complex triplet. This means that each of the eight particles in an octet is also a triplet, made up of three smaller particles, which Gell-Mann called “quarks.” As we see, the structure of each octet (or octave) of triplets is identical to the symmetry of the I Ching, with its eight trigrams. And there is more. Gell-Mann’s theory originally called for three kinds of quarks, called up, down, and strange—a subatomic “trigram.” But, then, to these were subsequently added three more types of quark, called charm, bottom and top. Enter the hexagram. All we need now to complete the picture is the number 64. It would be highly fitting if we could find it, because sixty-four is not only the number of hexagrams in the I Ching, it is also the number comprising the council of Brahmins who, according to legend, foretold of the impending birth of the Buddha. In fact, as I pointed out in The Infinite Harmony, this particular number has surfaced not in quantum chromodynamics, but in what is known in physics as superstring theory.

The central idea in superstring theory is that subatomic wave/particles are in reality infinitesimally small strings made of space. These strings vibrate endlessly over an infinite range of frequencies, and their interactions give rise to the observed characteristics of all known particles. You really can’t get more intellectually obscure than the theory of superstrings, and I am personally completely baffled by it, involving as it does no less than ten different dimensions (three of space, one of time, and six of God-knows-what) and a system of higher mathematics guaranteed to make the layman’s eyes glaze over in seconds. But no matter; all we need to know here is that this incredibly complicated system has created a superstring, out of nothing but space, that has precisely 64 degrees of movement associated with it. This supersymmetric system can apparently account for all subatomic quanta, and is capable, says the science writer Timothy Ferris, of “drawing all matter into an elegant picture in which particles’ attributes are seen as the vibrations of strings, like notes struck on Pythagoras’ lyre.”⁵

So we’re back to Pythagoras again, the original philosopher, a contemporary of the Buddha born five and a half centuries before Christ, who taught that everything in the universe obeys musical laws and who, like the yogis of India, believed that matter was “psychic.” And both of these ideas, as we have seen, have now gained a metaphysical foothold in the mind of the modern scientist.

Now, if consciousness is material in some way—as Gurdjieff and Bohm both believed—and if matter is conscious, though on an entirely different scale, then could the higher possibly influence the lower, and vice versa? Pythagoras would very likely say yes to the former proposition, possibly citing the mysterious powers of Orpheus and Amphion as examples. But he would also, being what today might be called a natural mystic, have believed that the psychic presence in matter could indeed influence human beings. People today of a sensitive or intuitive inclination often feel that nature speaks to us in many different ways. Mountains and forests, for example, as many people instinctively know, have a particularly powerful presence. So too do many ancient artifacts, such as the Great Pyramid or the Taj Mahal, the Cathedral of Notre Dame, or a statue like the Sphinx.

Ouspensky recognized a similar close relationship between himself and nature. He describes one of his drug-induced experiences in his second major classic, A New Model of the Universe: “Everything was living, everything was conscious of itself. Everything spoke to me and could speak to everything. Particularly interesting were the houses and other buildings that I passed, especially the old houses. They were living things, full of thoughts, feelings, moods and memories. The people who lived in them were their thoughts, feelings, moods.”⁶

In another passage, he preempts the modern physicist by describing the world he was seeing as “a world of very complicated mathematical relations”: “this means a world in which everything is connected, in which nothing exists separately and in which at the same time the relations between things have a real existence apart from the things themselves; or possibly, ‘things’ do not exist and only relations exist.”⁷

Sri Aurobindo saw the world in exactly the same way. In his view, all apparent separateness on the physical plane is simply an illusion. In the state of enlightenment, he said, the unity of everything is perceived as a living reality, but as one descends from the higher to the lower states of consciousness, a progressive “law of fragmentation” takes over and “things” appear once more as isolated, separate entities.

And science, of course, now supports this view. As we have seen, all subatomic particles are also waves of different frequencies, and this means that everything is composed of a vast, interconnected web of interference patterns. Talbot, in The Holographic Universe, suggests that our brains mathematically construct this so-called objective reality by decoding these varying frequencies that are really projections from another dimension existing beyond space and time. So perhaps the great ocean of waves and frequencies “out there” looks solid and real to us only because our brains automatically reprogram all this “fluid” information into the familiar form of the sense objects making up our world. In reality, however, everything is a vast sea of highly resonant interference patterns. The sun and stars and the planet we live on, the Great Pyramid and the Sphinx, even the brain itself—all these physical structures are in essence composed of overlapping waves.

In the last chapter we discussed the work of Robert Jahn and Brenda Dunne, whose experiments with the randomevent generator and the “pin-ball” machine provided compelling evidence for psychokinesis. Having found evidence of this ability in a large proportion of their subjects, they came to some interesting conclusions concerning the possible nature of such a process. They proposed that since all physical phenomena possess a particle/wave duality, then perhaps consciousness does too. When in a particle-like state, consciousness would be localized inside the skull, but when in a wave mode, like all waves, it can produce effects at a distance.

In a similar vein, though not in relation to psychokinesis, the Cambridge mathematician Roger Penrose has also considered the effects of quantum processes in respect of the workings of the human mind. When speaking of “action at a distance” between twin particles (non-local quantum correlations), he suggests that such phenomena could be involved in conscious thought processes over large regions of the brain itself, and that perhaps there is a direct relation between a “highly coherent quantum state” and a correspondingly high degree of awareness.

Jahn and Dunne have suggested that phenomena themselves are actually products of the combined interference patterns created by the wave motions of matter and the wavelike aspect of consciousness. They believe that psychokinesis occurs through an exchange of certain information between physical things and the human mind, not as a single directional flow from one to the other, but rather as a mutually interacting “resonance” operating between the two. These resonances sound something like the relations between “things” described by Ouspensky in the passage quoted earlier. Significantly Jahn and Dunne reported that the more successful volunteers often described a sensation of feeling “in tune” with the device.

Again, this is precisely what Indian philosophers and yogis have been saying since the dawn of their culture, that matter is responsive and that it is composed of resonating interference patterns, principally those of light itself. In his major work On Yoga, Sri Aurobindo describes a sphere of existence beyond space and time comprising a “multicolored infinity of vibrations,” of waves. Physical reality, he said, is simply a “mass of stable light”⁸—which is precisely the conclusion I came to way back when I was experimenting with various hallucinogens. But all of this “stable light,” according to the yogi, also possesses a measured degree of consciousness. This is apparently how yogi masters are able to influence the physical world: they have perfected a way of making direct contact with its rudimentary consciousness. Yogananda says much the same thing in his book Autobiography of a Yogi—that matter is simply “an undifferentiated mass of light.” The “law of miracles,” he said, “is operable by any man who has realized that the essence of creation is light.”⁹ So light has a very special place in the belief system of Hindus, which of course is why their most important annual festival—Diwali—is known as the festival of light. In fact, Hindus, Buddhists, and Eastern philosophers in general all emphasize the importance of light in their cosmological view of the world. Tune in to it, they say, and a whole new world unfolds. And so it would, for science tells us that light, the photon quantum, exists and operates in a timeless, spaceless, nonlocal realm. This, in my view, is the “eternal” world of the Hopi shaman, who can hold a “spaceless” universe virtually in the palm of his hand; the “infinite” world of the Egyptian priesthood, who taught that the soul of the godking can exist for “eternity”; the “heaven” identified by all the great revelationists in history, by people who have succeeded in glimpsing beyond the veil and bequeathed to us their illuminating testimonies of the extraordinary things they witnessed.

And, clearly, the prime mover in this nonlocal dimension is light, the Holy Ghost. In this chapter we have seen how the modern scientist interprets this important phenomenon. In the following section we shall see what the primitive dreamers of former ages had to say about it.